Chautauqua Visual Arts is launching its 2023 season with the openings — and opening receptions — for four exhibitions.
At 3 p.m. Sunday in Strohl Art Center, CVA hosts opening receptions for “Sense of Place,” “Mutual Attraction” and “Body Language,” while at the same time across the street, Fowler-Kellogg Art Center plays host to the opening reception of “Prisms & Paradigms.”
Erika Diamond, associate director of CVA Galleries, said several exhibiting artists will be present at Sunday’s receptions, including Venancio Aragon, Kazue Taguchi, Samantha Fields, Liz Nielsen, Chris Friday, Francis Crisofio and Elizabeth Coffey.
Chautauquans will have another chance to meet and hear from Aragon, as the New Mexico-based Navajo weaver and exhibiting artist in “Prisms & Paradigms” will give the only Chautauqua Visual Arts lecture of the season at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the Hultquist Center, when he will share details about his life, work and artistic process.
“My work is a process of documenting and preserving techniques from my people’s history and using them with my signature innovation: the Expanded Rainbow Aesthetic,” Aragon said. “I use over 250 colors of wool yarn that I have dyed using natural and synthetic compounds. My goal is to represent Navajo weaving as a living and evolving artform that disrupts notions about my culture and our place in modern American art.”
“Prisms & Paradigms,” which Diamond curated, brings together sculpture, photography, and textiles that focus on the use of iridescence and color gradients. “Mutual Attraction,” curated by Susan and John Turben Director of CVA Galleries Judy Barie, features the work of contemporary ceramicists Yeonsoo Kim and Jihye Han.
Also curated by Barie, “Body Language” is a thematic exhibition focusing on desires, moods, interpretations, and wonder. “Sense of Place,” curated by Diamond, is a non-traditional landscape exhibition considering relationships to place, with works of painting, textiles, photography, and ceramics, that explore the interconnectedness of earth, water and air.
In addition to visiting the galleries in-person, Chautauquans can view individual works and installation images of the current exhibitions at art.chq.org/exhibitions starting on Sunday; the digital experience will also include 3D virtual tours of the spaces.
